Mad Caddies - Hell's Kitchen - Tacoma, WA

I don't know why it took so long to see the Mad Caddies in concert, but it was worth the wait. They were one of the bands that I listened to a LOT when I was in that really impressionable stage of music discovery in college. My friend Lisa and I got to go see them live at an extremely small venue called Hell's Kitchen in Tacoma, WA.

I contend that there is no better way to enjoy one of your favorite bands then live at a venue so small you can smell them. They did not disappoint, they rocked the crowd like they were in an arena of 10,000 people. Words cannot explain the electricity that was flowing through the room.

I split my time between dancing/ruining my voice singing and taking photos. I was surprised to get a couple of good photos despite the dark room and raucous crowd around me. At one point I even lost my SB-600 flash on the floor when I jumped into the fray. I was able to recover the flash later, so all was OK.

After the show I was completely exhausted, and I might have caught the flu, but it was worth it 100 times over. You can see some of the photos I nabbed on my flickr photostream.

Faux Finish - Toy Gun

I just finished up putting a new finish on this plastic toy gun. I employed a lot of the techniques I learned at Scott Allen Caplan's "Faux Finish" panel at SteamCon. You can see the work in progress photos along with descriptions of the process on my flickr page. This was a fun, cheap, and easy project. It is ideal for someone who is interested in prop making. I plan on using these techniques to finish some from-scratch project I have planned for the future.

50 posts and SteamCon!

Yay! This is my 50th blog post! To celebrate, I will tell of our adventure at the first ever Seattle SteamCon. As you can see in the corresponding photo (courtesy of Nate Zimmer) our regular costume crew is back at it. This time we got all steampunked out. The event was at the Marriot in Sea-Tac. The venue really hit the style, though it was a bit small.

To see photos I took at the event, check out my flickr at it's new URL: http://www.flickr.com/photos/doranwa/

We met some really cool people there, my two favorites were Andrew Fogel and Scott Allen Caplan. Both these guys did panels on building and finishing props. I learned a ton of stuff at the 'con and am really excited to get some good prop-building in for next year's event!

To-Do List

I recently found myself with a growing list of things I really should get around to doing. This list only existed in my head, so these things left my conscious thought as soon as something more important or shiny grabbed my attention. Most of these were little things like "call Bank of America to activate new credit card". After a while these things piled up so much that I decided to consolodate them all into one to-do list. I chose to get a to-do list plug-in for my Google home page since that is what pops up whenever I open a web browser. I am certain that almost every smart phone, computer OS, web browser, and toaster has some kind of application like this (I am looking at you iPhone users).

Once I had the list I organized it into high, medium, and low priorities. The high priority stuff gets done today, the medium priority stuff gets done this week and the low priority stuff gets done when I have time for it. At the end of every day I check off what I finished and promote new things to high priority for the next day.
I highly recommend that everyone comes up with some kind of system like this. Treat the high priority items as "do this before I get to play today" type of things. If you can stick to this system you will be astounded at how much you can get done in a week.

Photography Assistant and a Portrait

This past weekend I got to be a photo assistant for Ron Martinsen, an extremely helpful and talented Seattle area photographer. Mostly this meant I got to hold things and aim bounce reflectors at the model. I was able to glean some extremely helpful photography hints from Ron as he worked. Working with a pro is probably one of the best ways to improve your photography, hands down!

The next day I tried to put some of what I learned to practice and shot some portraits of my beautiful and patient fiance, Brittany. The photo here is my end result and I am extremely happy with how it turned out.

Where I Go to Get Crafting Supplies

One of my newest hobbies has been crafting costumes and props for events such as the Penny Arcade Expo, the Portland Pirate Festival, Steamcon, and Halloween. Over the past couple months I have amassed a collection of favorite shops in the greater Bellevue/Redmond, WA area to look for tools, parts, cloth, and materials. Here is a list of those shops:

Hobbytown USA

http://www.hobbytown.com/

Address: Cleveland Street Square

16421-A Cleveland Street

Redmond, WA 98052

Phone: (425) 558-0312

Tap Plastics

http://www.tapplastics.com/

12021 NE Northup Way

Bellevue, WA 98005

Mon-Fri 8:30 to 6, Sat 9 to 5

Phone: 425.861.0940

The guys here are super friendly and they are right across the street from Lowe's.

Vetco Electronics

http://www.vetco.net/

12718 Northup Way # 100

Bellevue, WA 98005

(425) 641-7275

Pacific Fabric

http://www.pacificfabrics.com/

1645 140th Ave NE

Bellevue, WA‎

(425) 747-3551‎

Be sure to check what they have in their "remainders" pile. It is th ends of rolls of cloth and are sold at a discount.

Hardware:

Lowe's

11959 Northup Way

Bellevue, WA 98005-1919

(425) 646-9031

Harbor Freight Tools

http://www.harborfreight.com/

14506 NE 20th St

Bellevue, WA 98007-3764

(425) 746-1303

This is THE place to get cheap tools.

Crafts:

Ben Franklin Crafts

http://www.craftsandframes.com/

15756 Redmond Way

Redmond, WA 98052-3830

(425) 883-2050

Michael's

http://www.michaels.com

15600 NE 8th St # D4

Bellevue, WA 98008-3927

(425) 747-1221

Thrift Stores:

Goodwill

14515 NE 20th St

Bellevue, WA?

(425) 649-2080

Value Village

16771 Redmond Way

Redmond, WA 98052-4472

(425) 883-2049

I hope this isn't my only 15 minutes...

It looks like we got a little recognition from the folks over at G4 for our PAX 2009 Team Fortress 2 costumes. We also made it into a piece Kotaku did on the cosplay at PAX.

G4
Kotaku